The Show
Doctor Who really is a phenomenal show. True, it is a bit Modernist and morally paternalistic, but I love it all the same. One of the principle reasons I like the show (besides my unreasonably-strong affection for David Tennant) is because Steven Moffat, the head writer, has a very intriguing view of time. Now, I don’t agree entirely with Moffat’s view of causality—I am personally of the school of thought that doesn’t believe the past can be changed (although I must concede that Emmett Brown skirts this issue effectively by positing that a change in the timeline results in the creation of a new dimension [Brown, Back to the Future Part II, 1989]). However, Moffat takes the very unique approach of viewing the entire timeline from above, allowing single events to affect the past, present, and future. Russel T. Davies, the previous head writer, did this a bit in his seasons, but this was limited in scope—more for the purpose of foreshadowing the season finale than creating robust timelines. With Moffat, however, the central plot of multiple episodes is driven by this approach. But at this point I should probably explain to the non-Whovians out there what exactly I’m talking about.
Moffat’s approach to time-travel is perhaps best summarized by the following line from the show, in which the Doctor (the main character, an alien who uses a ship call the TARDIS to travel through time and space) tries to explain how time works to a human being:
"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff" (Episode 3.10, “Blink”).
Granted, that quote doesn’t really clarify anything, but I love it too much not to use it. Basically, what Moffat does is he takes singular events and has them affect all of time at once. In season five, for instance, the plot was driven by a series of cracks that kept appearing in different places at different times. These cracks were cracks in the fabric of time and space itself, which were the result of an explosion that occurred at some point in the timeline. It turns out that the cracks were caused by the explosion of the TARDIS. Because the TARDIS exists across all of time, its explosion threatened the entire universe—the danger wasn’t that the universe would be destroyed at the point in time when the TARDIS exploded, but that the entire universe, past, present, and future, would be destroyed. It would never have existed.
This approach to time has resulted in some very interesting scenarios. For instance, when the TARDIS does explode, the main characters find themselves on an Earth that has no stars. The reason is because the entire universe is being destroyed, but because the TARDIS was near the Earth when it exploded, it’s at the center of the storm and will be the last to be destroyed. But because the destruction of the universe is occurring across all of time, this means that the Earth has gone through its entire existence as the only planet in the universe—thus a human civilization has developed in which stars are a myth. In another episode, the timeline has been damaged so that every time is happening at once. In this universe, Winston Church is the Roman Emperor, ruling from a London populated by dirigible cars and pterodactyls. Again, we see a single historical event that affects the entire timeline.
The Theology
The connection between this view of time and the theology of predestination is not obvious, so it will take some explaining. As the audience we are able to see the Doctor Who universe as Moffat portrays it—as a big ball of wibbly wobbly time-y wimey stuff. The characters, however, still experience time as a linear progression of cause and effect. The theology comes in when we ask the question, how does God experience time? Now, I do not propose to describe the experience of the infinite creator of the universe. However, I do believe that the doctrine of Predestination—that God chooses who will be saved before they are even born—presumes to know how God experiences time. The element of time is right there in the name: Pre-destination. The prefix “pre” denotes “before”: God chooses us before we are born. This doctrine assumes that God experiences time the same way we do, as past, present and future. But is that really true? More to the point, can we know that with enough certainty to make it a point of doctrine?
Let’s start our examination with this observation: God is the creator of everything. This is a relatively unremarkable claim, since all orthodox Christians believe as much. God’s role as the creator is linked to his sovereignty and supremacy: God is the source of everything, and thus he is supreme over every other force. He is not constrained by the laws of nature or science, because he created them. Again we have not said anything remarkable yet. It seems implicit in this logic, then, that God is supreme over time, since he is the creator (Lord?) of time and space. God is eternal precisely because he exists beyond time—he is not affected by the passage of time, thus he is the same yesterday, today and forever. Now we have said something controversial, at least to those embroiled in the (somewhat silly) Open Theism debate. To me, the debate comes down to this question: is God subject to time? If he is subject to time, then he cannot be omnipotent, because he doesn’t have power over time. He cannot be omniscient, because his knowledge of the future is different from his knowledge of the past. And he is not omnipresent, because his presence is altered by time such that it is not the same in the future as it was in the past. Essentially, a god who is subject to time is not God. It is clear to me, at least, that God must be beyond time.
If God is beyond time, then his point of view is more like the audience—or, more precisely, the writer—of Doctor Who than the characters. God knows the entire timeline—he knows every plot development, every character arc, every twist and climax. And, like anyone who owns the show on DVD, every moment in time is equally present to God. This is key. For God, there is no past, present, and future. Every moment is equally present to God. The God who created the universe is the same God who appeared on Sinai, the same God who spoke to David, the same God with whom I interact today, and the same God who will judge all of us at the end of time. For God, all of those moments—the moment of creation, the moment I was born, the moment I was saved, the moment I die, and the moment I am judged—are all equally present.
Now, if God exists in this way—or, to be more precise, if he does not experience time the way human beings do—then what sense does it make to say that God decides who will be saved before they are born? Technically the claim is true, but it is equally true to say that God chose to save me the day I was born, the day I said the prayer, this moment right now, or that he will choose to save me the day when I stand before the throne. There is nothing special about the past that we should say God makes his decisions then. As human beings the past has a special significance because it is already settled, while the future is unknown and the present is in flux. This is not true of God. When he chose me—if he chose me—he chose me, is choosing me, and will choose me for all time. If we insist on picking a moment in time when God decides to save us, the past is not the Biblical choice. The Apostle Paul locates the saving event in the future, on Judgment Day (Romans 5:9-10, 10:11, 13:11; 1 Cor. 5:5; 1 Thess 5:8). Technically, then, it is more scriptural to say “God will choose me” rather than “God chose me.”
But ultimately such speculation is useless. Both Calvinism (Predestination) and Arminianism (the opposite, that salvation depends on the person’s choice to accept Christ) depend on a view of God that places him within time. If God is not in time, then nothing we say about how he chooses us has any real meaning. It means nothing to say that God chooses us before we were born, or when we chose him, because God does not choose us in time—he chooses us in eternity. And in eternity, all the distinctions of Calvinism and Arminianism fall apart.
So what do we say, then, about Predestination? Well, we can say everything about predestination, and nothing at all. That is, it is true to say, as scripture does, that God chose us before the foundation of the Earth. We can affirm this as true, as long as we similarly affirm that God chooses us on Judgment Day, and has chosen us throughout time and for all time. So we can affirm all of these as essentially true, although we cannot affirm any of them as finally descriptive of how God saves us. Ultimately we have to give this issue up to God as something that lies beyond human knowledge, and is therefore not worth fighting about. Therefore it seems as appropriate an explanation as any to describe the whole issue as "wibbly wobbly, time-y wimey... stuff."
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